Changing your life: how to gain confidence and self esteem


Thinking back on my high school years, I distinctly recall feeling awkward and not quite fitting in most of the time. That generated some self confidence and self esteem issues that were difficult to overcome. And it turns out that self confidence and self esteem are the two most important attributes to have in order to enjoy successful relationships, lucrative career opportunities, and successful athletic or musical endeavors. Since I have interest in improving all of those areas of life, it became obvious that I needed to do something to improve my mental outlook.

So I became pretty serious about learning how to gain confidence and self esteem. While it may seem difficult at first, it really ends up being just a matter of time, education, and willpower. The rewards are incredible – not only do I enjoy higher achievement, but each moment is infinitely more livable since I gave up judging myself incessantly. We really are a product of our thinking, so gaining control of your inner monologue is the most important key to changing your life.

It doesn’t happen overnight. For most of our lives, our behavior has been compared to some sort of standard, whether it’s in our job, school, or relationships. Consequently, we have a hard-wired running comparison meter that reports back to us how well we’re conforming to life’s requirements in any given moment. The only problem is that life really has no requirements (other than food, water, and sleep); the rest of it is just a collection of agreements, most of which were made for us by our parents and other authority figures.

Breaking this cycle of self condemnation doesn’t happen overnight. Self-acceptance and forgiveness for past “wrongs” is a terrific starting point. Guided imagery meditation is the best method I’ve encountered to help reduce self judgment and restore self esteem and confidence.

PUBLIC CONFIDENCE TARGET

Working together to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour

The Government has introduced a single top-down public confidence target for the police service requiring 60% of people to be confident that the police and local councils are dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter locally by 2012. This is measured through national and local surveys.

The confidence of local people and communities is crucial and surveys to measure public confidence enable us to better understand how effectively we are responding to local needs and priorities, helping the police and its partners to make your community a safer and better place to live. However, the focus on measuring public confidence does not mean that we no longer measure crime figures, arrests and detections; these all remain to help ensure that the Force is constantly working to improve its performance in preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice.

The performance of Dorset Police in achieving the single target is measured periodically through the British Crime Survey. However, this is also now supplemented by local surveys that enable a more detailed local breakdown of the findings which are reported on the National Crimemapper website as well as being published locally on the Dorset Police and Dorset Police Authority websites.

Dorset Public Confidence Survey Results

The specific survey question relating to public confidence asks respondents to what extent they agree with the statement that ‘The police and local council are dealing with the anti social behaviour (ASB) and crime issues that matter in this area’ and the same question is asked in both the nationally and locally commissioned surveys. In Dorset, respondents to the nationally commissioned British Crime Survey (BCS) and our locally commissioned Community Safety Survey both indicate that around 50% of people in Dorset agree with this statement. 

WHAT ARE CONFIDENCE POINTS?

Confidence points are used to give different weight to each of the games during a given week. You'll assign a point value (from 1 to 15 if there are 15 games, 1 to 14 if there are 14 games, etc.) to each game based on how strongly you feel about the accuracy of your pick. If your pick is on the money, you'll receive points equal to the confidence point value you associated with that game.

So, if you pick Penn State to beat Notre Dame and assign the game a confidence point value of 15, you'd get 15 points for a correct pick, but no points if Notre Dame wins. You don't lose points for an incorrect selection.

Each week's points will be tallied, and the player finishing with the highest total at the end of the year will be the winner of the group.

Each confidence point value may be used only once per week. So, during a 15-game week, after you've assigned 15 points to a game, your next highest available value is 14 points.

Please note than only Private Groups can elect to incorporate confidence points.